• The NHS will screen transgender-identifying children for autism under new guidelines following Baroness Cass’s review, with full rollout planned for 2025.
• A major study led by Simon Baron-Cohen found a higher overlap between autism and gender diversity, as legal protections for female-only spaces tighten.
It was revealed last night that the NHS plans to screen all children who identify as transgender for autism. This follows changes by NHS England after Baroness Cass’s review into youth gender identity services last year, which recommended that every young person referred to a gender clinic should receive a “holistic assessment for neurodevelopmental conditions.”
The decision comes after Cass’s findings showed that mental health issues are considerably more common among children reporting gender dysphoria.
A study lead by Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge analysed five datasets together and include 641,860 people, mostly adults; 30,892 had autism and 3,777 identified as gender diverse. The majority of the data from about 514,000 people came from an online survey conducted as part of a 201
According to a report first published by The Telegraph, the updated procedures will reportedly require medical professionals to assess a child’s mental health, family dynamics, and sexual development. Evaluations are also expected to explore whether the young person is experiencing same-sex attraction.
The updated guidelines will be put out for public consultation before their expected rollout later this year. Once approved, the new framework will be used at children’s gender clinics in London and Manchester, with implementation scheduled for early 2025 following Cass’s approval.
An NHS spokesperson stated: “As part of NHS England’s commitment to implement advice from the Cass Review, we have recently gone out to stakeholder testing on a proposed revised specification planned to replace the interim service specification for the Children and Young People’s Gender Service. We will soon be going to full public consultation on this draft specification which sets out the new holistic assessment framework that was described by Cass in her report.”
They added that “NHS England has recently changed the referral pathway so child patients can only access gender services that we commission if they’re referred by a paediatrician or a child and adolescent mental health worker.”
This development comes alongside news that women could soon be legally protected from sharing female bathrooms and sports spaces with trans women. This follows a recent Supreme Court decision defining “woman” in equality law based strictly on biological sex — allowing trans women with Gender Recognition Certificates (GRCs) to be excluded from single-sex spaces if it is deemed “proportionate.”
